


Shelter

by lilypottersghost



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But mostly angst, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-10-13 12:18:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10513635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilypottersghost/pseuds/lilypottersghost
Summary: Life during the years after Praimfaya.Bellamy, Raven, Monty, Harper, Echo, Murphy, and Emori are in space. Clarke is on earth, spending her days sick from radiation and barely clinging to life in Becca's lab. Luna is in the Bunker with the rest of the Sky People.After five years, Bellamy, Raven, and the others return to earth. But none of them could have expected what they find there...- Bellarke and Sea Mechanic (alternating chapters). AU after 4x08.(I started writing this after reading the leaked finale script pages. Almost everything is accurate except Luna is alive and Clarke never found Madi.)





	1. Let The Morning Come

**Author's Note:**

> basically, i have too many feelings and thought i'd post this fic over the next few weeks since the show is currently on hiatus. this fic is based off of what little we know about the finale, but i know a lot can change between now and then, so this fic is probably mostly AU after 4x08.
> 
> EDIT: this is the fic i'll be writing over the nine month hiatus! it's still somewhat AU because luna is alive and a few other details that i didn't know from the finale script leak. but i like where it's going so i will keep writing it!
> 
> you can follow me on tumblr @mermaeids if you want and don't forget to leave a kudo or a comment on your way out!
> 
> *

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He thought that she was dead. 
> 
> She knew that they were alive.

**Chapter One:**  
_Let The Morning Come_

 *  

 

 

> _And so, farewell. All our sweet songs are sung,  
>  _ _Our red rose-garland's withered;  
>  _ _The sun-bright day -  
>  _ _Silver and blue and gold -  
>  _ _Wearied to sleep.  
>  _ _The shimmering evening, like a grey, soft bird,  
>  _ _Barred with the blood of sunset,  
>  _ _Has flown to rest  
>  _ _Under the scented wings  
>  _ _Of the dark-blue Night._
> 
>                                    — Roland Leighton

*

He thought that she was dead. For months, he thought she was dead. Then months soon turned to years, and years turned to scars down his heart because _she is dead, she is dead._  

They tried to keep busy, up in space again, waiting out the promise of certain death below them. Bellamy, Raven, and the others tried to forget the people they’d left behind, the struggles they’d faced. But the metal walls closed in around them, reminding them that they had tasted freedom—the trees, the rain on their arms, the dirt under their feet—only to leave it for this: the hum of machines, the heavy air, the big black void of space.

Up here, without the birds and the glowing butterflies and the constant missions to save them all, Bellamy’s thoughts consumed him. _I left her behind_ played like a mantra in his mind. _I left her behind, and now she’s dead._

She died with the earth and all they had worked for, after all the sacrifices they made. It all came to nothing, because here he was, alive and without her, stranded in space without an anchor, without nuts scattered along a path to guide him home.

He stared at the floorboards of the room he shared with Monty and thought of Octavia. He stared at the planet below them and thought of Clarke. 

A few months ago, he’d asked Raven about her.

“Could she—could she have made it?” 

“Bellamy,” Raven had said, eyeing his expression before answering honestly, tears strangling her voice, “there probably isn’t even a body left.”

Bellamy didn’t speak for five days after that. He couldn’t stop picturing it. He’d witnessed other people perish in radiation, but never the death wave. If Raven was right, there wouldn’t even be any bones for them to bury, no death rituals for the commander of death herself, the princess of earth. There would be nothing left of her.

It all came to nothing.

/ 

It was a summer day—or at least, Emori said it must be summer on earth by now—three years since Praimfaya. All seven of them were in the measly little excuse for a mess hall, feasting on rations and trying to distract themselves. Raven was always looking for something to fix, but on days like this there wasn’t a wire nor gear left on this station for her to use to get her mind off of her loss. She didn’t show it as much as the others did. Bellamy didn’t know exactly the depth of their relationship (though he suspected it had been deep, romantic), but she sometimes called out for Luna in her sleep.

Raven came to sit next to Bellamy, sighing once the weight had been lifted from her leg. On the floor of the room, Monty, Echo, Murphy, and Emori had started a game of cards, while Bellamy, Raven, and Harper passed around a bottle of moonshine.

“Not today,” Harper said when Bellamy offered her a cup. 

He gave her a puzzled look. “Come on.” (Often, they found quite a lot of fun in making a drinking game out of watching their friends play cards. The bar for what they consider entertaining was at an all time low in this cluttered space station.)

“I… I wish I could,” said Harper.

Bellamy didn’t understand why Raven suddenly beamed.

“Seriously?” Raven said to Harper, her smile lighting up the room.

Harper nodded, and Raven surged forward to envelope her in an emphatic hug.

“What am I missing?” asked Bellamy.

Harper smirked. “Remember when you joked about our duty to repopulate the earth?”

Bellamy understood. To his surprise, the rapid rush of happiness—and something like hope—overcame him. “Are you sure?” he asked Harper as he briefly hugged her.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “I think I’m about a month in, but there’s no way to know for sure. Maybe if we had a doctor up here—”

The happiness dimmed when they all felt the hollow space in the room.

Bellamy shook it off. This was supposed to be a bright moment. “That’s good. That’s so good, Harper.”

She placed a hand on her stomach. “I think it’s a boy,” came hesitantly from her mouth. “But Monty’s set on having a little girl.”

Raven said, “I’ll bet you the skin off my back that you’re right. Mothers are always right about this stuff.” She swallowed a gulp of moonshine, barely wincing, then raised her cup to Harper. “The future of the human race is looking pretty good.”

*

Clarke knew they were alive. For years, Clarke knew they were alive, and it was enough. It was enough to get her through the unbearable isolation, the silence, the sterile solitude of Becca’s lab. She had to ration her food, leaving her emaciated and weak. Sometimes she hummed to herself. Other times she slept through the day, hoping that it would make the time go faster.

 _Five years_. The only thing she seemed to be aware of was time. She marked every day in her journal, cataloguing the dates and making sure that she kept up with the countdown on the whiteboard. Every morning, she woke up and wrote the number of years, months, and days until her friends would come home.

This wasn’t like those three months after the mountain, when she had craved the seclusion. Back then, she had wanted to be alone. But now, all she wanted was to be with them. She wanted Raven’s laugh, Monty’s wit, Harper’s hand on her shoulder.

She wanted… she wanted _Bellamy_. All of him. His arms around her, his heartbeat against her cheek. She wanted to trace every freckle on his face with her fingers. But he was among the stars, and she was on the ground, and sometimes she’d wake up in the dead of night with his name on her lips, and her hands would reach out for him but meet only air.

Her heart called out to him. It was as simple as that, she realized now, pacing the floor one afternoon a few months after the death wave. The simple fact was that her heart called out to him, and all those things that had kept them apart while they’d been on earth together now seemed meaningless. Her heart had wanted to run to him like she’d done that one cloudy day long ago, but she had kept it locked in a cage. After Wells, Finn, and Lexa died, the loss had been too great. She had never wanted to feel that way ever again. But even though she hadn’t opened her heart to Bellamy, even though she hadn’t let herself realize the depth of her feelings for him, she still felt that same loss now. She had done everything she could to prevent it, but here she was crying in the middle of the night, just like after Finn. Here she was reliving every memory and trying to picture them as if they were happening before her eyes, just like after Lexa. Here she was, still hurting over Bellamy as if he were dead. For him, her heart bled like a dying star.

/

The night before Praimfaya, he had come to her room in Becca’s mansion. She’d been sick with radiation poisoning for days, burning and coughing and waiting for death. Even after injecting nightblood, she was the slowest to recover.  

So that night she was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying not to accept death. She would not die. She couldn’t die, not after all this time, all this struggle. It had to have been for _something_.      

“You doing all right?”           

There he was at her door: the something.           

She sat up in bed. “Come here,” she said, ignoring his question. They both knew she wasn’t all right.           

He took a few steps with his bare feet on the cream-colored carpet, as hesitant as he was eager. Clarke saw the conflict in his eyes— _should he keep going, or should he back away_?

He chose to keep going, until he was at the foot of the bed, a question still lingering in his stance, his tilted head. She patted next to her on the mattress, giving him the last push he needed to climb in beside her, just close enough that she could touch him if she reached out, but too far away to soothe the aching in her chest.           

He settled against the pillows, gazing at her from under dark eyelashes.           

“Clarke?” he said quietly, a slight question hidden somewhere in his tone.          

She leaned closer to him. “We don’t have much time left.”         

“You shouldn’t think like that,” he said. “We have to believe that we’ll get through this. Raven and Monty will get the rocket ready in time. This time tomorrow we’ll be in space. We’ll be safe, and we’ll be together.”          

A smile teased at Clarke’s lips. “Out of the two of us, I’m usually the optimist. Do you know how many times I’ve had to assure you that we wouldn’t all die?”           

Bellamy laughed and reached to a stray hair away from her face, and she couldn’t ignore the way his knuckles lingered against her cheek for a moment too long. He caught himself and removed his hand. Bellamy glanced at the ceiling, as if suddenly unable to meet her stare.           

“We keep each other centered,” he said, matter-of-fact. “If you’re the pessimist for a day, I become the optimist. It’s how we work.”           

Clarke sighed. “And we work well, don’t we?”           

“We’ve made it this far.”          

She reached for his hand and gripped it with her own. “And we’ll make it so much farther, Bellamy. Some part of me believes that.”          

He grinned. “There’s the Clarke I know and love.” The confession slipped from his lips without meeting resistance, almost as if second nature.        

Her breath caught in her throat for one wonderstruck moment. Bellamy’s smile faded once he realized what he’d said. His jaw clenched. He tried to let go of her hand, but she held onto him.    

“ _Bellamy_.” Her voice splintered around the name.           

His eyes were deep enough to swallow oceans. Tears sprung into her own.

“I love you,” Bellamy whispered into the silence of the heavy night. The words wrapped around Clarke’s throat and when she closed her eyes all she could see was a noose around his neck, carrying him up into the sky. Her love was a death sentence.                       

“I don’t expect anything from you,” he said. “But you had to know. Before the world ends tomorrow, you had to know.” 

“I can’t say it back yet,” she murmured, resting a hand against his cheek. “I said it to Finn before I plunged a knife into his heart. I said it to Lexa before pulling the kill switch. I need to believe that you’ll live through this. I need you to live. And in order for that to happen, I can’t say it back.”           

“Clarke,” he said, his voice wavering. He clutched the hand that was against his cheek like a lifeline. “No matter what you might think, you loving someone doesn’t kill them. You aren’t that person.”         

“I am Wanheda, Bellamy. Wherever I go, death follows. I can’t lead it to you.”

/

That night, Clarke had been too afraid to fall asleep. She remembered watching Bellamy’s breathing even out as sleep quietly stole him from her. He looked so much younger, so peaceful.

The next morning, they had woken up, squared their shoulders, and tried to survive.

The next night, he was in the stars and she was on earth.

 

*

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!! comments and kudos are always appreciated <3
> 
> if you want to chat i'm @mermaeids on tumblr!


	2. Sea And Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One by one, they fell. Like stars from the sky, they fell.

**Chapter Two: _  
_**_Sea And Stars_

_*_  

> _Down the long white road we walked together  
>  _ _Down between the grey hills and the heather,  
>  _ _Where the tawny-crested  
>  _ _Plover cries.  
>  _ _You seemed all brown and soft, just like a linnet,  
>  _ _Your errant hair had shadowed sunbeams in it,  
>  _ _And there shone all April  
>  _ _In your eyes.  
>  _ _With your golden voice of tears and laughter  
>  _ _Softened into song 'Does aught come after  
>  _ _Life,' you asked 'When life is  
>  _ _Laboured through?  
>  _ _What is God and all for which we're striving?'  
>  _ _'Sweetest sceptic, we were born for living;  
>  _ _Life is Love, and Love is -  
>  _ _You, dear, you.'_

                                          — Roland Leighton

*

For months, Raven held it all inside. All her worry, all her grief, all her longing; she held it back, like the moon keeping the tide from the cliffs.

But four months after Praimfaya, the tide broke with an unexpected fury. 

It happened with an outburst, which was regrettably aimed at Monty. They were in the control room, monitors glowing before them. 

“What do you mean, _it’ll be more than five years?_ ” 

He shrunk away from the roar of her voice. “Just by one month!” he assured, holding his hands up in front of him. “By my calculations, it won’t be completely safe to return to earth until it’s been five years and one month.”

“What if they can’t make it another month?” she raged. “What if they all die in the bunker before then? What if we’re too late?” 

“Raven,” Monty tried, but she wouldn’t let him soothe her. It was all too much. She felt the waves crashing against her skin. 

Her breathing was frantic and shallow. The panic consumed her. She clutched her head in her hands, sliding to the metal floor. “I—I don’t know if they can make it. I don’t know if _I_ can make it—another month? I can’t make it another month longer, I can’t, Monty—” 

Monty rested a hand on her shoulder, trying to pull her back. “Raven, it’s okay. They’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

“I—I failed. I couldn’t save us.” 

“You did. You saved us, Raven.” 

“I couldn’t,” she gasped, “I couldn’t save her. She’s down there without me, and I—”

A look of understanding passed over Monty’s face. “Luna?” he said. “Raven, Luna’s gonna be okay. She’s in the bunker with the others, remember? She’s okay.”

“But—but…” The fight slowly seeped out of her. “But Clarke,” she said, because her grief still bloomed for her friend. “She’s—she’s dead. I failed her. I left her there to die, I—” 

Monty’s lip quivered. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

A tear slid down her cheek, and she realized she had been crying. She tried to reign in her feelings, but panic then turned to sorrow, and she lost her resolve. “Sinclair, he—he’s dead,” she cried. “He told me to stay in the rover, but I didn’t—I… I watched him burn—we burned his body. He’s… gone.” 

“I know,” sighed Monty. “I know.” 

“Finn’s dead…”

“I know.” 

“Clarke killed him—and I… I watched. And now—now Clarke’s dead too. I… I thought she could handle it and get back in time, I really thought—” 

“I know,” said Monty. “You tried your best. We all know it. And we’re alive because of it.”

Raven took a deep, shuddering breath. They sat there in silence for a few moments as she calmed herself down. Tears still ran freely down her face, but she was no longer panicking.

“You and Harper,” she began, looking at Monty, “you’re happy?”

He smiled softly. “We’re very happy.”

“Good… that’s good.” At least two of them were together. At least there was that. Raven had lost Luna, Emori had lost Murphy, and Bellamy had lost Clarke, but at least Monty and Harper were happy. It wasn’t enough, but Raven found solace in that fact.

She closed her eyes and imagined Luna’s cheek on her cheek, her hands covering her hands, her voice in her ear.

And Raven backed away from the tide.

 

/ 

 

Three days before Praimfaya, the Sky People and some from Trikru and Azgeda trekked through the woods on the way to Polis, to the bunker that would save them all. Well, save five hundred of them. There had been a raffle to choose who got to live and who got to die. Luck hadn’t been on Raven’s side, but Luna had been granted a spot. 

They walked side by side, fingers brushing on occasion, making Raven’s heart flutter every time.

“Do you need to take a break?” Luna asked. She had always been observant.

Raven smiled ruefully. “I’ll take a break when we get to the bunker and you all are safe.”

Luna’s face fell. “And what about you?”

“Clarke, Bellamy, and some of the others have given up, but I have an idea.”

Luna giggled. “You always have an idea. What is it?" 

Raven looked up to the sky. “I’m gonna get my spacewalk.”

 

*

 

One by one, they fell. Like stars from the sky, they fell.

Luna had seen it before: the slow succumbing to radiation poisoning over time. She had lost her clan to it, and now she watched Skaikru slowly vanish before her eyes.

Here in the bunker, they were supposed to be safe. They were supposed to be protected from this sort of thing. But Skaikru had been wrong before.

(They were not safe.)

As time slipped through her fingers, so did her friends. The first died a month after Praimfaya, and as months went by, a death-like panic engulfed the living.

Abby was the second to go (for she had overworked her body for months and was still consumed by grief), and Kane soon followed her like Orpheus running after Eurydice into the depths of the underworld.

Luna watched with glassy eyes as more and more people met death through poisoned blood and boils on their skin. Tragically, she remained. She remained through the deaths of countless children and friends she had recently gained only to lose them again.

Two years after Praimfaya, Octavia kom Skaikru succumbed to the radiation. Luna held her hand through it all and wept.

“You’ll be okay,” said Octavia, clutching her fingers as tightly as she could. “You are _natblida_. You’ll live to see the sun again.”

“I don’t want to anymore,” Luna cried.

“But you will. You will see Raven. And you’ll see my brother.” A tear slipped from Octavia’s eye. “And when you do, tell him that I miss him.”

“I will.” 

“Thank you, Luna. I’ll say hello to Lincoln for you.”

As she drew her last breaths, Luna pressed her lips to her forehead and whispered the many farewells of their people: “ _Yu gonplei ste odon_ ,” followed by, “ _I give myself to the miracle of the sea_ ,” and finally: “ _Until our final journey on the ground. May we meet again_.”

Octavia met death as she did everything: with furious defiance and grace. And Luna lost her last remaining friend.

 

/

 

In those dark days, she thought of Raven, her little bird. She imagined what it must be like in the sky again. She envisioned Raven, her dark hair like a river down her back, floating in zero-G again, finally at home again.

Luna longed for her like she longed for the rain on her skin. Raven had washed away her sorrows and given her light again, only to go back up to the sky where she belonged. It brought Luna comfort to think that Raven was still alive, that she still breathed and laughed and spoke.

Without memories of Raven, Luna would have withered away. But she clung to hope because Raven was still alive.

 

/

 

In her happiest dreams, she relived it.

Luna had said her goodbyes, had made her peace, but before she could walk through the door to the bunker, she felt a hand pull her back.

She turned to face Raven, and was surprised to see tears on her cheeks. 

“I’ll see you again,” Raven said. “Won’t I? In five years, I’ll get to see you again.”

Luna smiled sadly, swallowing back tears of her own. “Yes. We’ll be together again. Soon.”

Raven surged forward and pressed her lips tentatively to Luna’s. The kiss was there and gone again, giving Luna no time to process it.

Raven pressed a palm to Luna’s cheek. “I’ll miss you,” she said.

Luna shook her head and kissed her again, this time deeper and more insistent. It burned bright enough to shine in her memory. “I’ll miss you more,” she said.

And then they were separated. Luna missed her more with every day.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow okay this chapter broke my heart into a million pieces. i hope you like it!! anyway i'm sea mechanic trash.
> 
> follow my new blog on tumblr @mermaeids! i'm always open to questions!


	3. And Then They Were Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they returned.
> 
> *
> 
> as always you can follow me on tumblr @mermaeids and don't forget to leave a kudo or a comment if you want!

**Chapter Three:**  
_And Then They Were Alone_

*

 

> Because you died, I shall not rest again,   
>       But wander ever through the lone world wide,   
>  Seeking the shadow of a dream grown vain   
>       Because you died. 
> 
>  I shall spend brief and idle hours beside   
>       The many lesser loves that still remain,   
>  But find in none my triumph and my pride; 
> 
>  And Disillusion's slow corroding stain   
>       Will creep upon each quest but newly tried,  
>  For every striving now shall nothing gain   
>        Because you died.
> 
>                                         — Vera Brittain

* 

Harper’s water broke on a dark night in April.

She and Bellamy were sitting in the hallway in front of the only window when he heard her go, “ _Oh_ ,” and looked down to see the pool under her feet. 

“The baby’s coming!” they both shouted, and Monty came running.

By the time they got to the girls’ dorm, Raven and Emori had already gotten the bed ready.

“How far apart are your contractions?” asked Echo, helping Harper to lie down. Echo had always been a bit distant since they got up here, very out of place among people who had been her enemies on earth. But when Harper had announced her pregnancy it was quickly decided that Echo knew the most about prenatal care, and so she became something of a caretaker for the young mother.

Echo, Emori, Murphy, and Monty ran around the room gathering supplies while Harper breathed heavily on the bed.

Even though they were doing their best, Bellamy still wished for Clarke. He wished that she could be here because she was trained in medicine, but also so she could witness their friend become a mother. She was missing all of this.

“We’ll do everything we know how to do,” Raven assured him, seeing the doubt on his face. “And we’ll get through this, just like we’ve gotten through everything else.”

Bellamy watched as Monty and Harper shared a look of complete joy, excitement, and fear. 

They had a long night ahead of them.

/

Harper was in labor for a long time. Almost too long, Raven thought, but Clarke wasn’t here to tell them if something was wrong. They just kept telling Harper to breathe, kept wiping the sweat from her forehead, and kept trying to hold on to hope. 

Hours and hours later, the little baby made his presence known with a defiant cry.

They all cried. The joy was too much to bear.

After they left Harper and Monty alone with their child and the rest of them went to get some sleep, Raven found Bellamy sitting in front of the window. Today they had a view of earth, blue and gray under the sunlight.

His gaze didn’t falter as Raven sat down next to him.

Even now, surrounded by so much relief and joy, everything about Bellamy was dulled. Since Clarke’s death, Raven hadn’t seen him come back. He was here with them, breathing and talking and even laughing at times, but part of him had always been down there, on earth, where Clarke had perished.

He sniffed. “I just… I just miss her.”

Raven rested her head on his shoulder. “So do I.”

Minutes passed, but time was invisible to them. Up here in space, it was almost impossible to sense time at all. 

“The night before Praimfaya,” Bellamy said, “I told her I loved her.”

Raven lifted her head and looked at him intently. A tear slid down his face, forging a path between his freckles until he wiped it from his jaw with the back of his hand.

“She… she said she couldn’t say it back,” he continued, “because she thought that she was cursed, somehow… because everyone she had ever loved had died, and she didn’t want me to die. But… but then _she_ died. She stayed behind and now she’s gone. And I was so angry. I’m still… I’m still so _mad_ at her. Because she died.”

Raven was crying softly now too, clutching Bellamy’s shoulder and feeling his pain.

“I wish I could make it better,” she said. “I wish I could bring her back. I wish it every damn day. But she’s not coming back, Bellamy. Us being miserable won’t change that.”

“I know I have to let her go. But I don’t know how.”

“All you can do is try. We’ll get through this.”

He shrugged and attempted a crooked smile. “We always do, don’t we?”

The air between them lightened. “Through hell and back,” Raven said.

 

* 

(Two Years Later) 

* 

The landing was rough.

“ _Swim away, swim away_ ,” Raven kept whispering to herself as she got them safely into the water, sweat on her brow and heart pounding in her ears, but still alive.

Once they realized they’d made it, the cabin erupted into cheers. 

“We’re home!” Monty shouted, high-fiving Harper, who pressed a relieved kiss to the forehead of the squirming toddler in her arms, a little boy named Adam.

Raven glanced back at Bellamy, who had a cut on his forehead from the turbulence. He half-smiled at her. “You did it,” he said. 

“Did you ever doubt I would?” Raven placed a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go home.” 

They all swam to shore, happy to leave the rocket and their life in space to sink beneath the waves. 

The day was gray. The sky was smothered in clouds, only strings of sunlight reaching through to touch the sand, which looked more like ash.

Raven fell to her knees once they reached the shore. Her leg throbbed with pain from the swim, but it was worth it to feel the sand between her fingers, to breathe the sea salt air. Inevitably, she thought of Luna. Her heart soared. 

For a brief butterfly of a moment, she thought she could see Luna—was she standing near the tree line?—but she blinked and the vision dissipated. It worried her. 

Raven’s seizures had stopped once they’d gotten to space and she could rest her mind, and she hadn’t had one for years. Did the stress from the landing bring them back? She desperately hoped that she was just exhausted, that the vision meant nothing.

Emori approached her. “You need a hand?” she said, offering hers.

Raven nodded in appreciation. Emori helped her to her feet, and together they walked across the beach.

It looked different, Raven noticed. The trees were bare skeletons, the ground barren except for a few green shrubs. She saw blue violets dotting the forest floor and smiled. There was even a faint buzz of bugs. Somehow, the earth had begun to heal itself in the five years they’d been gone.

“Where to?” she asked once they’d regrouped.

“Luna’s rig is just off this shore,” said Bellamy. He took a moment to get a grip on their surroundings before pointing diagonally through the woods. “Which means we need to go this way. We should get to the bunker by nightfall.”

 _We should get to Luna by nightfall_ , thought Raven.

 

/

 

They found Luna at nightfall. 

They pried open the door to the bunker and ran down the steps. And Raven saw her. But instead of running to her like she had planned, she stopped in her tracks.

The bunker was empty except for the girl from the sea.

Luna looked like a ghost. Hers was the face of a girl who had fallen under the weight of death. Her haunted eyes told the tale of too many heartbreaks and not enough strength to pick up the pieces.

“Raven?” she said. The word rippled through the echoing bunker like a drop of black rain in the ocean. “Is that you?”

Raven’s face crumpled. “ _Luna_ ,” she cried and limped as fast as she could down the rest of the stairs and across the room until they were face to face.

“Is that you?” Luna repeated in a hollow voice. There was confusion in her eyes.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m here.” Raven touched her face, but Luna flinched away.

“It’s okay,” Raven whispered. She didn’t know what had happened, where everyone else had gone, or why Luna was in such a state, but right now she couldn’t think about any of that. All she cared about in this moment was that Luna was standing in front of her 

Gently, as if handling a baby bird, Raven wrapped her arms around Luna’s shoulders. Slowly, the girl in her arms began to relax and returned the embrace. Raven sobbed in relief and buried her face in Luna’s shoulder, breathing in the scent of sweat and something like death.

But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Luna was here and Raven was back and they were together. _They were together._ Raven pressed a kiss against Luna's cheek, trying to quell her tears.

The others had stayed back, had given them space, but Bellamy was restless. 

Once Raven and Luna had pulled away—Raven keeping a hand in hers—Bellamy said, “Where’s Octavia?” 

The look on Luna’s face enough of an answer. And that’s when the world crumbled around them.

 

*


	4. Because You Lived

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> somehow, they find each other again.

**Chapter Four:**  
_Because You Lived_

_*_

 

> Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,  
>  And I shall see that still the skies are blue,  
>  And feel once more I do not live in vain,  
>  Although bereft of You.
> 
> Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,  
>  And crimson roses once again be fair,  
>  And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,  
>  Although You are not there.
> 
> But though kind Time may many joys renew,  
>  There is one greatest joy I shall not know  
>  Again, because my heart for loss of You  
>  Was broken, long ago.
> 
>        — Vera Brittain 

*

Clarke lost track of time. She did not mean to; it simply happened. One day, she didn’t check the clock. The day ran away from her, followed by many more that went uncounted.

It had been four years since Praimfaya. Those were the first days she didn’t mark on the wall. 

Time turned from linear to something swirling around her: a whirlpool from which she couldn’t escape. She wasn’t as sick as she’d been the first few years, but she was losing faith. Her sleep patterns became more irregular. Her eating habits dwindled. She spent some days staring at her ceiling, wondering where her friends were right now, what they were doing. She liked to imagine them up in space. The daydream brought her comfort.

Raven would wake up first every morning, she thought. (Raven always woke up first.) She would bang on the walls to get everybody up. “We got work to do!” rang her voice in Clarke’s head.

Monty and Harper would always be finding little gifts to make each other smile, even on a spaceship. Clarke heard their laughter, even four years later. She could picture Murphy and Emori holding hands and taking walks around the ring as if it were a lush forest.

She thought of her mother, who was with Kane and Octavia in the bunker. _It must be easier for them_ , she thought. All of the people she loved were either underground or in space—both unique forms of isolation—but they were with others. They were loved.

And Bellamy. She could barely bring herself to think about him these days. It hurt too much. He was her open wound, her sentence left unfinished. He was the glow on the horizon before a dawn that never came. She was still stuck in the darkness of the night he’d left behind.  
  
When her memories became too bright, she etched drawings into the walls. The eeriness of it wasn’t lost on her; this was exactly what she had done as a prisoner on the ark, only under slightly different circumstances. Back then, the loss of her father had burned so fresh on her skin, but she barely felt it anymore. She longed for the younger version of her that was resolute in everything she believed in, who had sooner gone to prison than let her father’s message go unheard. Then she recalled four years ago when Praimfaya had been approaching, and she had kept the truth from her people over and over again—the very thing her father was floated for standing against—and shivers crawled up her back like spiders. What had she become? Why had she survived this long, only to be locked up and alone again?

“ _Maybe life should be about more than just surviving_ ,” she had once told Lexa. “ _Don’t we deserve better than that?_ ” Maybe this is what Clarke deserved. Isolation. Despair. A life that slipped through her fingers like water.

She drew the faces of the people she loved. First, her father. Then Wells. Then followed Finn and Lexa. She drew Jasper, because Monty had told her how the light had faded from his eyes. She wanted to remember what those eyes had looked like in her memory, when he had been alive and just a kid who hadn’t known any loss.

She loved drawing the faces of those who were still alive, because it didn’t feel like a goodbye. It brought her peace.

But she still lost track of time. 

Soon, another year had passed her by and she had no idea.

*

 

Bellamy was a shipwreck of a man.

When they had first arrived at the bunker, and only Luna was waiting for them, he had felt the world open like a whirlpool underneath him.

“She died well,” Luna said later. _It was a good death_ , a voice from long ago echoed in his mind. Back then, he had fallen to his knees and screamed out in sorrow. Now, all he could do was stare blankly. 

And Octavia had been gone a long time. She hadn’t died recently; he hadn’t just lost her. She had been dead for _three years_. Three years, and that entire time he had lived on, oblivious and anxiously awaiting his return.

And here he was. And she was long departed.

/ 

“Bellamy!” called Echo behind him. “We haven’t mapped the territory yet. You can’t just go off by yourself!”

“Let him go,” came Monty’s quiet voice. “He needs to be alone.”

They had set up camp in the meadow above the bunker: a grassy plain littered with faint stone outlines of where the buildings of Polis used to be. It was a temporary camp of haphazard tents and only leftover rations for food. They had yet to decide where they should settle. It seemed like a big decision for the last nine people on earth.

Ever since he learned of Octavia’s death, he’d been on edge. Everyone felt it. His anguish was a palpable thing. He couldn’t keep track of what had happened. All of this. It was as if he had been asleep when he’d been in space, but now that he was on earth again, he felt every memory as if they were happening right before his eyes.

He tried to find solace in the trees, in the silence of the woods, but none came to him. The branches breathed around him. In the breeze, he heard voices in his head, snippets and memories and overwhelming regret. 

_I won’t let anything bad happen to you Octavia._

He broke into a run.

_She died from radiation poisoning. I held her hand. She told me to tell you that she misses you. She was at peace._

He couldn’t control his ragged breathing.

_It was a good death._

A sob reached his throat.

_I love you, big brother._

He punched a tree. His pain turned to blood running down his fingers, but it didn’t help. Nothing could quell the aching in his chest.

Just when he had taught himself to love her as a brother loves a sister and not as a parent loves a child, just as she had forgiven him for her own rage, just as their relationship had been healed by time and something like forgiveness, the world had ended and she had died.

The world was gone and she was dead.

 _Dim the stars and sing the world to sleep_ , thought Bellamy. _She is dead_.

/

And yet, time went on. Miraculously, Bellamy began to heal.

It was a strange occurrence to him, but on this newfound earth, this earth that had risen with the second dawn—there seemed to be more room for healing. 

Maybe it was little Adam’s innocent eagerness. (“ _Adam_ ,” Harper had named him, “ _like Adam and Eve. The first people on earth_.”) Adam was just two years old and approached everything on the ground with wonder. He had been sick for the first few days after landing—his little body adjusting to the new surroundings—but now he wouldn’t stop running around, picking up rocks and picking meadow flowers. In his young eyes, Bellamy saw the wonder of one hundred kids who had seen the ground for the first time after a lifetime confined on the Ark. That fateful first journey to the ground had been both magical and frightening, but Adam saw only the magical. Spending time with him helped Bellamy look to the future instead of the past.

He also loved watching Monty and Harper, whose love for one another had only grown, and Raven and Luna, who seemed to be making up for lost time. Even Emori and Murphy, who had split up for a few years ago but seemed to be growing close once again. In all of them, Bellamy saw the future of the human race. It was a happy future.  
  
The work helped, too. Everyone kept busy. They had spent three weeks in the meadow, making periodic trips down into the bunker to gather supplies. Soon, they would be on the move again.

“The sea,” Luna had suggested to the group, her head resting on Raven’s shoulder one night while they were sitting around the campfire. “We should live by the sea, don’t you think?”

And so, it had been decided. The sea, it was. ( _From the water we are born, and to the water we return_.)  
  
The evening before they left, they all gathered around the door to the bunker. Monty etched it into stone: _Here lies twelve hundred members of the Thirteen Clans. Yu gonplei ste odon. May we meet again._

Adam picked flowers and laid them upon the tombstone, not knowing what any of it meant or why Bellamy, Raven, Monty, Harper, Luna, Echo, Murphy, and Emori were all crying.

The morning they left, all was bright. The grass seemed to glow under their feet as they began their walk across the meadow, helping each other over rubble and shielding their eyes from the sun. Monty carried Adam in a sack across his chest. The toddler wouldn’t stop babbling on about the bugs and the flowers and other gibberish that no one could quite understand. 

Bellamy’s pack was heavy on his shoulders. The trek was long. They set up camp that night in the forest, and he guessed that they couldn’t be that far from the dropship. 

It was dusk. Darkness was only beginning to tease the treetops, and there was still enough light for a walk. “I need some air,” he said once they’d had dinner and put out the fire.

“We’re outside,” said Raven dryly.

He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Be back before dark,” said Emori. “We don’t know what beasts lurk these woods at night.” 

“I’ll try not to get eaten alive,” Bellamy said as he walked into the woods. _Famous last words_ , Clarke’s voice teased in his head. She tended to come back to him in half-jokes and making fun, all the little moments they had shared during their time on the ground.

He ventured through the trees. Most of them were relatively small—nothing like the towering trunks he’d been used to before Praimfaya. Now the earth was blooming again and the trees were younger than their perished ancestors.

The dropship still stood, stubborn and proud. As the approached, the emptiness in his heart awoke from its slumber. He felt the absence of every member of the hundred. The dropship was only a skeleton of the legacy they’d left behind. Now most of them were dead. None but five remained.

He missed Octavia and Clarke, now more than ever. He could almost see them. Just there, by the door—it was Clarke, a rifle still ringing from the warning shot above her head, blood in her eyes, everyone awaiting her next command. And over there, where the wall used to be—he could see Octavia, sneaking out again to where Lincoln waited. Bellamy wondered if Lincoln had led her to wherever she was now; if all his sister had to do after she died was follow the flowers to join him the afterlife.

 _Hollow_. Bellamy was hollow.

This was hallowed ground, he thought as he approached the dropship door. This was where their story had begun.

And this felt like an ending. 

/ 

He didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at the dropship and thinking of the past. Long enough for the dusk to grow heavier.

He was violently ripped from his reverie by a snarl. _An animal?_ It came from the bushes to his right.

Another from his left. There were more of them.

Bellamy pulled his gun from its holster and held it out in front of him. Vaguely, he realized that this was the first time he’d held a gun like this in over five years. It still put a sour taste in his mouth. 

He caught sight of one of them. In the dim light, they looked like mutant wolves. One of them had four eyes. Another, two mouths with double the teeth. Bellamy guessed that there were four wolves in all. They were feral. Desperate. Hungry.

Hungry for him. 

The first wolf lunged, but Bellamy managed to put a bullet between its four eyes before it could touch him.

He wasn’t as quick with the second. It latched on to his thigh and left a deep bite before he could shoot it. The third, he shot in the stomach before it could touch him.

The fourth wolf approached him from behind. Bellamy was thrown to the ground. This was the biggest of them all by far. He wrestled with the wolf on the ground, shooting several times and missing. The beast slashed its claws across Bellamy’s arms, tearing through his jacket.

Suddenly, the weight lifted. The wolf was tackled to the ground by some unknown force. Bellamy heard a whimper before silence; no more snarling. Bellamy sat up and met the scene in front of him with utter bewilderment. 

A hooded figure with a bloody knife stood over the body of the wolf. 

Had one of his friends come after him? 

He stood. His vision was rough around the edges with pain, but he faced his rescuer with an expression of gratitude hovering on his lips, even though he didn’t know how it was possible that someone could be alive on earth. It wasn’t one of his friends, that much he could tell. The hooded figure was still facing away from him, wiping the wolf’s blood from their knife. 

“Thank you,” Bellamy said hesitantly. Strange as they were, this person had saved his life.

He heard a gasp. A shock lanced up his spine.

“ _Bellamy_?” 

The familiar voice rattled his bones.

_How could this be?_

He couldn’t bring himself to believe it. 

But then she turned, and the gray hood fell from her head, and he saw wavy strings of gold.

“Bellamy?” she said again, standing completely still, as though she were seeing a ghost. Bellamy _knew_ he had to be seeing a ghost.

“You can’t be real,” he said, stepping closer to her. She was drained, whittled down, but she was still Clarke. She had those blue eyes he hadn’t been able to forget for the past five years, that resolute stance that was so indisputably _Clarke_ that his breath caught in his throat. 

“Bellamy?” she repeated, stuck in a loop of confusion and hope.

He took another step closer to her, shock still freezing all of his thoughts but one: “You were dead.” 

Clarke sighed. Her eyes were heavy with such overwhelming sadness and joy that it bled from her into him. “You were right. About the nightblood solution. About me not dying. About _everything_ ,” she said, her voice cracking on that last word. “I’m still here.”

Still, he couldn’t let himself feel relief. Not yet. Not when he felt like he could blink and she’d be gone. Maybe she was a trick of the light. He had hallucinated the dead before. Maybe he had accidentally eaten something with traces of jobi nuts, or maybe he just missed her that damn much. Every other possibility made more sense than the reality that was standing in front of him: Clarke, alive. Clarke, breathing. Clarke, her palm against his cheek. 

“You can’t be real,” he whispered, and his breath tickled her hair as he spoke. Her hair was shorter, he realized, with strands of berry red. “ _Please be real_.”

Clarke held his face with both of her hands. She seemed to be suspended in a state of incredulity all her own. “I’m here,” she assured him, though fear ran over her words, as if she didn’t even quite believe them. She inhaled a shaky breath. “I never died, Bellamy. And I never gave up hope that you’d come back to me.”

He saw a glimmer of a tear on her cheek, and he couldn’t take it any longer. He reached for her. He hesitated for a moment—his hands pausing in the air—but then he touched her face, felt her tears, heard her sigh in relief, and he _knew_. He didn’t know how, but she was real and she was here. 

She seemed to realize it too. They crashed together.

He pressed his face into her neck, breathing in her musty scent. Even under all that sweat and blood and stink of death, she was still Clarke. She was still everything from his daydreams and nightmares, everything he had ever hoped for, everything he had missed. For so long, he had missed her. It had been _so fucking long_.

“ _Bellamy_ ,” she sobbed into his shoulder. Her voice filled it with relief and joy and despair at the same time. ( _Relief_ for finding each other again. _Joy_ for the promise of never leaving each other again. _Despair_ at all the time they had lost.)

He tightened his embrace until he could feel every inch of her body against his own, but it wasn’t enough. His lips trailed up her neck, brushing against her pulse point, and he rejoiced at the simple fact that her heart was beating. He held no significant religious beliefs, but in this moment he was certain that he had been blessed. Clarke was breathing. She was in his arms.

He pulled away and looked into her eyes. He wiped her tears, though he could feel his own tickling his lashes.

“Bellamy,” she said again, this time murmured with gentle reverence. 

“ _Clarke_ ,” he said. 

“I’ve been so lonely,” Clarke said, staring hungrily at his face, as if trying to commit every freckle to memory. She pressed her forehead against his.

“You won’t be lonely anymore,” he promised.

 He could scarcely believe it. _He wouldn’t be lonely anymore_.

*

Clarke didn’t know how long they stood there, just breathing. It was the darkness that led her to finally pull away from him, for the sun had nearly disappeared.

Absently, she noticed the scratches from where the wolf’s teeth had dug into his shoulder. “You’re hurt,” she said.

“I don't feel it,” he insisted, pulling her back toward him.

She giggled—actually giggled—into his neck. In that brief moment, she felt eighteen years old again. 

“You have to let me look at it,” she said. “It could get infected and you could die.” 

“Always the pessimist,” he teased, echoing the conversation they’d had the night before Praimfaya. With sudden intensity, Clarke recalled his confession, and how she had spent every day for the past five years waiting to say it back to him.

“I love you, too,” she said. “I can say it now. Because you lived.”

He kissed her forehead. “I love you, still.”

If a heart could break from happiness, hers did.

All she could do was stare at him. His brown eyes that grew darker with the sunset, his curly mess of hair, the freckles like constellations across his face. This face. Oh, how she’d yearned for this face.

She smiled. “If you really loved me, you’d let me look at those wounds. I didn’t save your ass in Praimfaya just for you to die of a measly infection.” 

He laughed. The sound was twinkling wind chimes to her long-silent world. “You can fix me up when we get back to camp. It’s a ten minute walk from here.” 

The spell of their untouched happiness was broken when curiosity suddenly surged into Clarke’s mind like a dam breaking. “Who is with you?” she said. “Is everyone okay? Have you been to Polis? Are the people in the bunker out yet? Is everyone alive?”

Bellamy’s breath caught, and from his expression Clarke knew that the answer to at least on of her questions was _no_. He opened his mouth, but she blurted, “Wait.” She didn’t know if she was ready.

“Clarke—” Bellamy began, but she shook her head. 

“I take it back. I don’t want to know.”

But he could see through her. He knew that she needed to hear this. She needed to know, even if she was afraid. 

“Everyone who went to the ring is okay,” he continued. “But the bunker wasn’t sealed well enough. It couldn’t keep out the radiation for as long as we thought it could.”

Clarke shook her head. “ _No_ —” 

Bellamy’s voice wavered, but he kept speaking. “Your mom is gone. So is—so is Octavia and everyone else who was in there except for Luna.” 

Clarke dissolved into tears as Bellamy embraced her again, this time softer. Clarke wept because it was all she knew how to do, all she seemed capable of.

Her mother. Kane. Octavia. Nothing but still bones, ash on the wind. Where there had once been life there was only loss. 

She could only form three words: “ _I’m so sorry_.”

Bellamy pulled away to look at her, brushing her hair from her face. “It isn't your fault.”

 /

Vaguely, Clarke felt his arm around her waist, half holding her upright as he led her through the trees. The world was far away from her, but she tried to walk alongside him even when it was like walking through water. She was light and heavy at the same time. It was too much for her to handle.

Five years without anything happening at all and now Bellamy was here and her mother was dead and everything was different. She couldn’t carry it all. On top of it all, she hadn’t eaten in over a day. She had been traveling for about a week, having finally left Becca’s island for Polis, but there hadn’t been much to eat on the way. She had run out of rations, and animals and edible plants were scarce.

Bellamy kept walking while keeping her up. They reached a break in the trees, and she saw tents.

“About time, Bellamy!” rang out a familiar voice. Clarke blinked and saw Raven by the light of a dimming campfire. Clarke’s knees buckled. Bellamy’s arms around her tightened.

“Don’t think for a second that I forgot it’s your turn to do the dishes— _Holy shit_.” Clarke’s vision was growing blurry, but she heard Raven exclaim, “ _Clarke!_ ” and call for help.

The last thing she felt was Bellamy’s hands on her face before everything went black.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the long awaited Reunion™. these two killed me in the finale and i can't possibly wait nine months (or longer) to see them together again.
> 
> as always, i'm @mermaeids on tumblr and a kudo or a comment would be great!


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